The Chicago company does this by maintaining a database of intersections known to have red-light cameras and stretches of road with speeding cameras. The database currently has more than 5,000 intersections, speed camera locations and popular speed traps. But it's being updated twice a day by Cobra employees who are tasked with finding and verifying new locations by calling various cities, police departments and local businesses near major intersections. Due out in the spring, the detectors are priced from $389 to $439, depending on the model.

FYI these are illegal to possess or use in Canada.
PS I like the Scandinavian “sliding scale” of fines BTW. If fines are meant to deter the conduct of the individual, then it ought to be in a just proportion to that individual’s resources; so that the rich and the poor feel the same sting, so to speak, for identical misconduct.

Interesting – so, are municipalities legally obligated to disclose the locations of said cameras? If not, I wonder what the success rate is in finding this info out via phone call. Otherwise, I suppose the info could be assembled via crowdsourcing ala submissions from drivers familiar with local camera locations.

Day late and a dollar short, as it seems that the ability of pranksters to easily spoof these cameras by simply photoshopping license plate numbers and taping them over the real plate, will soon give everyone the “reasonable doubt” necessary to fight these in court.

they aren’t radar detectors, which are illegal, but just a GPS device that beeps when your location on the map gets close to a speed camera or red light camera location in their database. You could do this with your GPS, but it would mean denoting all the cameras yourself (not to mention we don’t have speed cameras in Canada and I can only think of 3 or 4 intersections that have red light cameras). Road Angel has existed in the UK for years and years offering this exact service.

But this brings to attention the fact that now people will be told that they can blow the next red light because there’s no camera. Morons like that should be collected, put into a big arena where they would all fight to the death, then the winner would be put on a pedestal and… Well, George Carlin can tell you the rest.

@#11: Driving at the posted speed limit can actually be much more dangerous than speeding. This is because the people around you generally drive at the speed which is comfortable for the road, which is almost always faster than the posted signs.

And there is simply no way to convince everyone drive the posted limit. People will just go at what is comfortable, which also happens to be, in general, still a safe speed as well as being more efficient (less time and fuel spent).

Speed limits are set too low in many places. (On purpose maybe?)

As for running red signals, I don’t think I have ever seen anyone else run a red light in my life. Is this really a big problem? I bet people going through red lights and causing accidents aren’t paying attention in the first place, so a camera makes little difference.

In fact, when I was looking for numbers on this, all I could find were all kinds of sources indicating that cameras cause more accidents, with drivers braking hard on yellows to avoid a chance at getting a ticket. Then add the six US cities that were intentionally shortening yellow lights to increase the camera profits, making the situation worse.

I have carefully gone through red lights myself late at night when no one was around, instead waiting around alone for two minutes for no one. This device would give me a heads up in that situation. There is no reason to wait other than to follow the law, and the only reason to follow the law is to not get caught breaking the law (if you respond to this sentence, make sure you understand it fully first).

A buyer would have to expect to pay more in tickets than this device costs. In other words, they’re planning on speeding (naturally) and running red lights (wtf?). Maybe law enforcement will have a database that tracks the cars of people with this device so they can catch them running red lights.